Now We Are Monsters (The Commander) Read online

  I had just finished a day and a half of fun with the hippies, as they called themselves, and with the tourists who came to their zoo down in the Haight. Yes, Gray Line actually ran tourist busses down to the Haight for the show. Simply amazing.

  These innocents were such good prey, though I wished their clothing styles revealed less. My transformation gave me a lot of enhancements, including muscles, and as an Amazon woman, short skirts, blue jeans and I no longer got along, if we ever did. My current preferred clothing style involved a checked poncho over an ankle-length dress. Those huge shoulders of mine were damned hard to disguise.

  I had a problem. A big problem.

  It was time for me to go home.

  I growled as I drove through the dark streets. I didn’t want to go back to Keaton. I loved my week of havoc, loved being strong, and free, and a predator. I loved when people feared me. I loved when no one beat me. I loved freedom.

  Keaton wanted me back in her den of degradation and pain. I couldn’t even think about returning without my body shaking with remembered abuse, so I parked the car in the first parking spot I found. I had to calm down. I put my head in my hands and steadied my breathing. She had warned me back when I signed on: ‘I’m going to enjoy hurting you.’ At the time I nurtured a baseless hope she might go easier on another Arm, but it hadn’t worked out, and she realized early on I could survive things that would kill a normal. She loved her sadism so much it turned her on, aroused her. Worse, she was psychotic. The cruelty appeared possibly be part of being an Arm – not a given, but at least you could make the argument. She certainly thought cruelty was part of being an Arm, and she put work into making sure I picked up those same tastes.

  She succeeded.

  Sensitive readers can now go upchuck off in a corner. Readers who believe I was some kind of saint can go off and nurture your shattered delusions. I learned a lot from Keaton in those early months of my transformation, and her sadistic cruelty was definitely part of it. When I accepted my being evil, I accepted the cruelty along with the rest.

  I had been naïve about a lot of things in the Detention Center, but when I recognized my decision to go with Keaton as selling my soul to the devil, I was dead on.

  Keaton’s psychotic episodes, however, were another thing entirely. When low on juice, she occasionally let her mind slip away, and some nightmarish demon moved in. I had survived one major episode and several minor ones, but those episodes scared the living crap out of me.

  Keaton wasn’t God. I knew enough now to vanish into the night and become someone else. I knew the Arm basics: how to hunt down my juice, kill it, and make the dead body vanish. I knew how to fight and kill normals. Hell, my spree week had proved to me I could do just about anything I wanted.

  It was oh so good to be an unconstrained predator.

  Rage at Keaton’s psychotic breaks buried my predatory pleasure and I lost my temper. My ride squealed out of its parking place, unbidden, in gear and my foot on the gas before I realized what I had done. The car screeched over the curb and plowed right into the window of the tobacconist’s store. The bumper rode over the windowsill, the car made an awful screeching and crunching noise as the bottom rode over the low brick wall under the window, and the wooden Indian fell on the hood. The car only came to a slamming halt after the wheels hit the brick wall and I jerked forward to bang my head on the steering wheel. I had achieved a tactical victory over the wooden Indian, but he had captured the strategic victory by taking out my car.

  Damn, that was stupid.

  I had gotten better at controlling my temper over the last several months, but well, I still had room for improvement. My head was bleeding, my neck hurt, and if I wasn’t an Arm, I would probably have injuries I needed to worry about. What’s more, I had ruined my ride. It was going to be a bitch finding another one to steal at this time of night. Yet another dropped breadcrumb waiting for the police to find.

  Pissed, I forced the door open and pulled myself out. As I did, I caught a glimpse of myself reflected in the window I hadn’t crashed. Damn. I hadn’t been good looking to start with, but being an Arm didn’t improve things one bit. My face was younger looking, yes, but I had become gaunt and fierce. Below the neck I might pass for a man, a well built and athletically chiseled man. The deltoids in my shoulders looked like melons and my trapezius was large enough to shingle. My pectorals bulged out nearly as much as my now flat breasts once did, meeting in the center with a canyon that only wished it was grand. Below, my abs were tight enough to bounce a penny. The circumference of my calves was nearly as large as my waist had been, pre-transformation, and my biceps weren’t far behind. Even my lower arms and hands had turned inhuman, far far beyond unfeminine, looking more like the caricature of a robot arm and hand from a bad science fiction TV show.

  Keaton’s musculature, of course, made me look normal. She thought in time my muscles would dwarf hers in size and I still hadn’t lost anywhere near as much body fat as she had. Her skin was so thin she looked like an anatomy model.

  Still, these changes made me angry. The mere thought of Keaton ate at my self-control. I sneered at the reflection, grabbed my backpack from out of the back seat and started to wipe the car for prints. As I did, three restless natives, men in their late twenties and early thirties, ambled over. They reeked of pot and cheap booze.

  “Hey lady, need some…” the scruffiest one said, from the back.

  I didn’t need this. I turned to them and glared, letting my body stiffen and filling my mind with well-practiced predator thoughts: the stalk, the chase, the kill. The back two turned and ran, instinctive fear. The third, the numbass in front, stopped cold, a distant streetlight barely illuminating his dirty jacket and torn blue jeans.

  “What the fuck are you?”

  Dammit. Namvet.

  “Go.” I focused my rage at Keaton and the whole damned fucking universe at him, and let my mind fill with every vile thing I had done in the past week. My California swath of murder and mayhem had made the national news, brought in the FBI and police from around the country, and the newspapers and criminal textbooks still reference my work as a case example of spree killing. Yes, I was the California Spree Killer. I’m not going to try and excuse myself. I let my beast out completely, abandoned all restraints and indulged in every vice and evil deed I thought of. I even broke up a Monsters Die protest in Berkeley all by my lonesome self. Alright, I’m proud of that one. Much of the rest of what I did I’m still embarrassed to admit to.

  Mr. Half-drunk Namvet’s bladder let loose. He turned, stumbled, slowly backed off until he found a corner to put between us, and ran like hell.

  “Fuck this,” I laughed. I gave up on the car, backing off ten paces before I emptied a clip into the gas tank. The car caught fire before I had a chance to toss a lit match into the leaking gasoline.

  I took off down the street at a jog, flames warming my back as I ran. I needed to be far away from here by the time the police arrived.

  A mature Arm would understand instinctively my love of being a predator. I doubt anyone else would, no matter how good the explanation. How can I explain what it really means to be a predator? To enjoy the kill, but not only the kill: to enjoy the hunt, the power, the helpless terror of the prey as it falls, and the feast that follows. The freedom to do absolutely anything.

  There is no greater pleasure than the juice. Juice is the Arm’s life; she can’t live without juice and the only way an Arm can get juice is to take juice from Transforms. An Arm can’t help but love taking juice and everything associated with the taking, including the hunt and the kill. It’s natural for an Arm to be a predator and it’s natural for an Arm to enjoy being one.

  I denied everything at first. I did everything possible to lock away the terrible, cruel predator within me and lock the beast inside. I chained up the instincts my transformation gave me like a child who tries to deny the dangerous urges of puberty. I told myself I was demon possessed and invented irrational supernatural e
xplanations for every change I went through.

  Locked within me the beast had festered. Now, the beast was out.

  How cruel is a sane, healthy predator? How sadistic is a hunter meant to be? What is ‘normal’ for an Arm? The jury is still out on that. Psychologists have been studying us for years. The biology of an Arm is different and how much that is responsible for an Arm’s predatory mind is an open question. Keaton, all alone as the first Arm, hadn’t found real sanity. How much sanity had I found? More than I had when I tried to pretend I was a normal. Less than some of the Arms who came later. Someone has to be first, though, Hank!

  When I faced the predator within me and took it for myself, I healed a part of my mind Transform Sickness had torn away from me. I was whole again for the first time since I transformed. Stronger. But I took in poison along with the cure.

  How much of what I became was healthy, natural? How much was poison?

  Some, at least. Even back then, some part of me realized I had gone too far. How far was too far, though? I didn’t know, and still don’t. Even the normals can’t figure out what is sane and what is madness when they consider themselves, and they have had thousands of years to consider the question. For me, I had nobody to compare myself to, except Keaton.

  An hour later, in a new disguise and a new ride, I got back on the road, driving south out of San Francisco. Thinking and weighing options. I wasn’t stupid. I understood that if I went back to Keaton I would be prey again.

  One fact, though, had seeped in past my gut-churning terror of Keaton: the Arm basics were just the start. I knew nothing about the other Transforms, or how to interact with them; Keaton did, extensively. She had Arm tricks I didn’t understand in the slightest, and several she had tried to teach me that I painfully failed to learn. She controlled people with scary ease while all I did was confuse and terrify them. She knew far more ways of fighting than she had taught me. Lastly, she knew enough about how to work with money that she only had to do petty theft and robbery when the mood struck her.

  I cruised past San Francisco International Airport on the 101, then the nearby side streets, on the lookout for extraordinary police activity. I found none, despite being less than fifteen miles away from my latest tour de violence. I found none inside the airport, either, after I had parked the car and cased the place. My disguise was of an overweight woman; I couldn’t do men because I had failed to learn how to disguise my voice.

  My plane didn’t leave for two hours. More time to think.

  I sat in an overpriced airport coffee shop, sipping hot chocolate and eating stale coffee cake while I considered. If I bugged out now I would leave with Keaton as an enemy. She expected me to return. If I didn’t leave America I would spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for Keaton. If she found me, she would likely kill me.

  Now that I had given up on my delusions of goodness, I found it a lot easier to understand myself, and what it meant to be an Arm, including one important thing I had figured out while on my spree: Arms don’t tolerate competition. Period. I learned to express this during my spree, in Arm fashion, to anyone who annoyed me. I chased people out of my way whenever I chose. And the intolerance for competition was a big part of why Keaton abused me, so she wouldn’t regard me as competition when she trained me. No, to leave Keaton I had to convince her to let me go. My dreams of disappearing into the night were just that, dreams.

  But how? The Arm inside my head said ‘When you go back Keaton’s going to beat the crap out of you, just to make sure you don’t look like competition’. I ignored the voice. If I let fear make my decisions for me, I would be the mindless shell again, as I had been in those initial weeks with Keaton, reacting like a robot to whatever button she pushed.

  If I wanted Keaton’s actual cooperation, I needed to offer her something in return. I needed something to give Keaton.

  It took me the full two hours in the airport before my battle lust-addled head figured out what I had to do.

  Gilgamesh: March 22, 1967 – March 23, 1967

  Gilgamesh climbed off the train in Philadelphia and waved goodbye to Midgard, who he had met up with again in Boston. Midgard was on a mission given to him by Vizul Lightning and Occum, to search out the source of some rumors of a Beast Man on the Delmarva Peninsula. Gilgamesh still hadn’t met the fabled Occum, who had recently tamed a second Beast Man, a tiger-oid named Shere Khan. Before embarking on his, um, quest, Midgard spent time in New York City with the senior Crow, Shadow, and hung out with Zero, a Crow who subsisted on the dross left in subway cars.

  Gilgamesh metasensed four Crows in Philadelphia, but no Arms. Annoying, as the Crow letters and rumors placed Zaltu here, and he hoped to find his Tiamat here as well. He had wandered the country for far too many miserable months before he finally came after Tiamat again. He missed the Arm, or at least her dross.

  He walked toward the center of town through the freight yard, passing first a mound of coal thirty feet tall, and next a mound of some white crystal that appeared to be salt but probably wasn’t. Past the coal and faux salt sat a yard filled with cars. Fords, Chevys, Chryslers. Rank after rank of them, brand new and just off the trains, waiting for their new dealership homes. After the cars he passed steel bars all lined up in neat stacks, acres of steel bars on rough asphalt pavement, all surrounded by chain link fence.

  After three miles of walking, one of the four Crows decided to walk toward him. The other Crow appeared to be quite happy to metasense Gilgamesh, and led him to a large riverside park the signs labeled Fairmont Park. The park was a pleasant contrast to the rail yard, silent and natural, an illusion of wilderness surrounded by a large city. Gilgamesh found the other Crow along a sheltered section of trail, well hidden among the trees. In the damp March cold there were few walkers out. When Gilgamesh drew close enough, he recognized the Crow as Sinclair, which brought a smile to his face.

  “Sinclair,” Gilgamesh said. He kept his voice quiet and controlled to fight off the panic brought on by any new situation, the price of being a Crow. Philadelphia disturbed him. He could metasense hundreds of Transforms.

  Sinclair looked the same as when Gilgamesh had met him the first time. He was young in appearance, his clothes were clean and neat, and his voice was soft and polite. “It’s good to see you healthy. Do you have a name now?”

  “I call myself Gilgamesh.” He was painfully aware of his own shabbiness and the filth of his clothes.

  “So you’re Gilgamesh! I’d heard the name but I wasn’t positive it was you,” Sinclair said. Now the older Crow grinned wide.

  “I’d like to thank you for the help you gave me when I was just starting.”

  Sinclair nodded and paused for over a minute. Quiet conversations with long silences were a Crow universal. “It’s my pleasure to see you learned to live as a Crow. However, Philadelphia isn’t a good place for a young Crow. There are two Arms here.”

  Gilgamesh nodded. “Good.”

  Sinclair raised an eyebrow, just a bit. “You were expecting them?”

  “I’ve been hunting them.”

  Sinclair stopped and looked at Gilgamesh for a long time, his face blank.

  “Why?” he asked. “I’d think that after the events in St. Louis you would never want to be near them again.”

  What happened in St. Louis had kept him away for months. “I miss the Arm dross,” Gilgamesh said, sad. “I don’t think I have it in me to be an itinerant Crow.”

  “You understand the danger?” Sinclair asked. “There’s no Detention Center here to keep them safe. They’re both free, and the older Arm, the Skinner, is vicious.”

  “I understand the danger,” Gilgamesh said.

  Sinclair looked at him again. “There are four other Crows in Philadelphia beside myself: Wire, Orange Sunshine, Ezekiel and Tolstoy. Every one of them is older than I am.” Gilgamesh had missed one, which meant one of the talented older Crows lived here. “I’m not sure a Crow barely over six months old will be able to tolerate two fr
ee Arms. They aren’t as mindless as people believe; we suspect they may even possess human-normal intelligence. Very very dangerous.”

  Gilgamesh’s smile returned to his face, pleased to have another Crow speak of an Arm as something more than an animal. “Zaltu, the one you call the Skinner, has more than human-normal intellect. Tiamat, the younger one, is flat out brilliant. Her breakout from the St. Louis Detention Center was a masterpiece of deception and planning.”

  Sinclair shivered for a moment. “Then you have tales to tell the other Crows that they won’t be able to resist.” He paused in thought. “It’s good you came. I can suggest places to stay and help you settle.”

  “Thank you,” Gilgamesh said, glad for the help.

  “So,” Sinclair said. “How are you holding up?”

  He was asking how much control Gilgamesh had over the curse of all Crows, the constant terror.

  “I can’t complain. Experience helps. I’ve done a lot of wandering and met many Crows.”

  “I’d be interested in hearing about it. In notes, if you have to.”

  “I prefer to talk with other Crows face to face. I find it helps.”

  “Interesting, very interesting,” Sinclair said. Studying him.

  Gilgamesh walked closer to Sinclair, pleasantly surprised to find comfort in Sinclair’s familiar presence, despite the fact they had only interacted at a distance in their one previous meeting. He sat down on a rusty iron bench a few feet away from Sinclair, who smiled at him in encouragement. Gilgamesh studied Sinclair, who easily passed as a successful and well-dressed normal human. “I’ve just come from up east, from New York and Boston, where I exchanged notes with Occum.”

  “I’ve read about him,” Sinclair said, wide-eyed. “He’s one of the old ones, like Shadow in New York and Chevalier, the San Francisco artist. I’m just as happy not to have anything to do with the older Crows.” Sinclair shook his head at Gilgamesh. “Changing the subject…has Occum really tamed a second beast?”